Humanity’s Most Catastrophic Attempt to Drill Into the Earth

Bright Side

What happens when humans try to dig too deep? In one of the most ambitious—and disastrous—experiments ever, scientists attempted to drill straight into the Earth’s crust. The project promised groundbreaking discoveries about our planet, but instead, it unleashed unexpected dangers, extreme heat, and terrifying consequences. From equipment failures to impossible temperatures, this deep-earth expedition tested the limits of human ingenuity…and survival. Join us as we explore humanity’s most catastrophic attempt to pierce the planet itself and the lessons learned from going too far beneath our feet.  Animation is created by Bright Side. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Music from TheSoul Sound: https://thesoul-sound.com/   Check our Bright Side podcast on Spotify and leave a positive review! https://open.spotify.com/show/0hUkPxD34jRLrMrJux4VxV   Subscribe to Bright Side: https://goo.gl/rQTJZz ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Our Social Media: Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/brightside Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/brightside.official TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@brightside.official?lang=en Telegram: https://t.me/bright_side_official   Stock materials (photos, footages and other): https://www.depositphotos.com https://www.shutterstock.com https://www.eastnews.ru ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------  For more videos and articles visit: http://www.brightside.me  ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- This video is made for entertainment purposes. We do not make any warranties about the completeness, safety and reliability. Any action you take upon the information in this video is strictly at your own risk, and we will not be liable for any damages or losses. It is the viewer's responsibility to use judgement, care and precaution if you plan to replicate.

Transcript

00:00That's one small step for man, a giant leap for mankind.

00:07In the late 1950s, everyone was captivated by space exploration.

00:13But there was a group of rebels who wondered not what's out there, but what's down there.

00:19This team called themselves the American Miscellaneous Society.

00:24Yes, that's their real name.

00:25And they started one of the biggest projects ever.

00:28Project Mahalo.

00:30Joyful and determined, they had no idea what a nightmare they started.

00:36First, let's understand what the project was about.

00:39You probably know that Earth is like a giant onion.

00:42If you cut it in half, you'd see it's made of layers.

00:46Each one is different from the next.

00:48The crust is what we all stand on.

00:50It's incredibly thin, like the skin of an apple.

00:53It's made of tectonic plates, almost like puzzle pieces.

00:57And they float on the layer beneath.

00:59That layer is the mantle.

01:02It's mostly solid, made of rock.

01:04But these rocks flow and move very slowly, just a little bit over thousands of years.

01:10They're also incredibly hot, thousands of degrees Fahrenheit.

01:13So it's a bunch of scorching stones moving around like caramel syrup.

01:18And when the mantle moves, the tectonic plates above move as well.

01:24Usually, this movement is slow and harmless.

01:27We don't even notice it.

01:28But sometimes they can bump into each other, get stuck, and so on.

01:32And when they do, they send such horrifying vibrations through the ground that they're hard not to notice.

01:39These vibrations are called seismic waves.

01:43In 1909, a Croatian scientist, Andrija Morhorovicik, noticed something weird.

01:50Turns out, at a certain depth, seismic waves suddenly speed up.

01:54He didn't yet realize that he stumbled upon a boundary between the crust and the mantle.

02:00It became known as the Moho Boundary.

02:03Now, try to guess what the Project Mahalo guys decided to do.

02:07It was during a meeting of the National Science Foundation.

02:12Everyone was discussing current scientific progress.

02:15Suddenly, Walter Monk, a geophysicist and oceanographer,

02:20casually threw out a take that shocked the room.

02:23Why not drill all the way down to the mantle?

02:26His idea was outrageous.

02:29Drill through the ocean floor, deep into the planet's skin,

02:33reach the Moho, and see what it's all about.

02:36Never mind the fact that the ocean is crazy deep with crushing temperatures and violent currents.

02:43Super bold, but not entirely out of nowhere.

02:46If we start from the ocean floor, the Moho lies just about 3 to 6 miles below it.

02:51It's much easier than starting from land.

02:53That would require digging from 10 to 60 miles deep.

02:57That made the oceans the best bet for reaching it.

03:01Monk wasn't the only one.

03:02Harry Hess, one of his colleagues, was just as excited about the time.

03:08At the time, people didn't know much about plate tectonics.

03:11Hess was one of the founders of that theory,

03:14believing that the world is made up of giant moving plates.

03:18To him, it was great.

03:20Drilling to the mantle would give him evidence to prove that theory.

03:23They became a team and found more like-minded scientists.

03:26They combined the most brilliant minds in earth science.

03:30Roger Revelle, Maurice Ewing, and Arthur Maxwell.

03:35They called themselves miscellaneous because there were all sorts of scientists in the team.

03:40Poor guys didn't know that their playful name would later come back to haunt them.

03:44But the NSF was dumbfounded by their idea at first and rejected it.

03:50Because, duh, it would be a nightmare to pull off.

03:54So, our team secured $50,000 just to make a plan.

03:58Then, they presented the official banner.

04:01Luckily, science was on the rise and there were rumors about other countries trying their own deep drilling projects.

04:08So, the AMS got the green light this time.

04:11The plan consisted of three phases.

04:15Phase 1. Do a drilling test.

04:17Check how things are going.

04:19Phase 2. Build an intermediate drilling vessel.

04:22Phase 3. Keep going until they reach the Mojo.

04:26And they got a funding of a whopping $2.5 million.

04:30And finally, in March and April 1961, the project finally began.

04:37Phase 1 took place off the coast of Guadalupe Island, Mexico.

04:41They used a converted barge called CUS-1 and some insane brain moves to make it work.

04:48Originally, CUS-1 was made for drilling oil offshore.

04:51It was one of the best things we had for drilling in deep water.

04:55But a catch was that it could only go a few hundred feet down.

04:58And remember, we need at least three miles.

05:03The team had to come up with something revolutionary.

05:05Dynamic positioning.

05:07It's a tech that allowed the ship to stay perfectly still in the middle of the ocean.

05:12Even without an anchor.

05:14It worked like this.

05:15They dropped six buoys into the water, forming a circle around the ship.

05:19These buoys sent underwater echoes to help the ship understand where it's located.

05:24Using motors and a joystick, the crew could keep CUS-1 right in the center of the circle.

05:30And surprisingly, they started making progress.

05:34Even though ocean drilling is incredibly hard, they drilled through thick layers of sediment

05:39and reached an astonishing 600 feet below the seafloor.

05:43About two statues of liberty.

05:45And the seafloor itself was almost 12,000 feet deep.

05:49This was just the beginning.

05:51Deep down, they stumbled upon tons of basalt.

05:54A type of volcanic rock.

05:56It doesn't surprise us now, but for that time, this achievement was groundbreaking.

06:01Turns out, they got through Miocene-age sediments.

06:05Rocks formed millions of years ago.

06:07This discovery told us so much about the history of our planet.

06:13Now, the entire world held its breath.

06:16Even the famous writer, John Steinbeck, the author of East of Eden and The Grapes of Wrath,

06:21got caught up in the excitement.

06:23He joined the project and wrote a dramatic article about it for Life magazine.

06:28He wrote that we knew less about the ocean floor than we knew about the moon.

06:33That line stuck.

06:34The biggest surprise was that President John F. Kennedy sent a telegram congratulating the team.

06:41It's like the space race turned into inner space.

06:45And, for a brief moment, it looked like they just might do it.

06:48But, years later, Walter Munk said that the very success of Phase I doomed the project.

06:56The early triumph raised expectations sky-high.

07:00From the start, the miscellaneousness of this society led to tons of disagreements,

07:06logistical hurdles, and the costs just kept rising.

07:09When the NSF realized just how successful the project was, they took over in 1961.

07:17The original society became just an advisor, and this completely screwed things up.

07:23One of the scientists said that it was a lengthy and unattractive trail of bickering, bitterness, and short-sightedness.

07:32They wouldn't even decide what exactly they wanted to do, and whether they even want to reach the moho.

07:37After that, the project found the new contractor company, Brown and Root.

07:42But it was a political decision, not a scientific one.

07:46Brown and Root had no experience in deep-sea drilling at all.

07:50Poor scientists had to suffer because this company didn't understand the project's goals and how hard it is.

07:56Some scientists even quit because of how annoying that was.

08:00As a result, when they calculated how much it would actually take to reach the moho,

08:05it turned out to be about $1 billion by today's standards.

08:09This shocked absolutely everyone.

08:12The public was mocking them, which didn't help at all.

08:15Some articles called it Project No-Hole and gave titles like How NSF Got Lost in Mo-Hole.

08:22The final blow happened in 1966.

08:25The project's most loyal supporter, Albert Thomas, passed away.

08:30Plus, the situation in Vietnam was escalating.

08:33As a result, the project was stopped after eating up tens of millions of dollars.

08:39What's even worse, this giant, impossible idea took the funding from smaller and achievable things.

08:46But it wasn't entirely for nothing.

08:49Project Moho-Lo pioneered a new deep-sea drilling technique, which is now standard.

08:53They also inspired many new, similar, smaller ideas.

08:58And science just kept going since then.

09:01In May 2023, scientists finally achieved this dream.

09:05They actually pulled up rocks not even from the Moho boundary, but from the mantle itself.

09:10They got them from the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean.

09:13So maybe one day, we'll be able to drill all the way down there.

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